My wife and I caught “The Space Between Us” on Netflix the other night, having missed the chance to see it in the cinema. This US romance follows the character of Gardner, a boy born in space and raised on Mars when his astronaut mother falls pregnant before the mission but dies in childbirth. The mission director, Nathaniel, keeps Gardner a secret from the world, fearing the media fallout. As a result, Garnder grows up in an isolated research station, raised by a somewhat unwilling mother in the scientist Kendra, spending his days dreaming of coming to Earth to find his father and spend time with his street-smart online soulmate, Tulsa.
(Spoilers) Garnder gets his chance to return home and the young couple go on a road trip around the US, our hero risking a heart attack in Earth’s stronger gravity, while winning the heart of the jaded Tulsa. After a series of escapades, they find out that Gardner’s father is in fact the mission director Nathaniel (which honestly, I picked about 3 minutes into the film), who could not go to Mars because of a congenital disease that would kill him on launch. Obviously, Earth is too much for Garnder, and as he starts dying it’s up to Tulsa, Kendra and Nathaniel to bundle him into a rocket and launch him into space, where his heart can beat freely again. So, the film ends on a happy note – Gardner and Nathaniel travel to Mars as father and son, and Kendra decides to foster Tulsa as the teen begins to train for a future Mars mission. This is all well and good, but the film left me feeing flat. After turning it over in my head, I think I figured out why:
No-one paid a Price.
I’ve touched on this in some earlier articles. In many stories, our protagonist must gain victory at some type of personal cost, even if it’s a symbolic loss of their earlier life. Luke Skywalker loses his father. Katniss Everdeen loses her sister Prim, the person for whom she first entered the Hunger Games. Frodo loses a finger, and is left physically and emotionally scarred from his adventure. Tony Stark dies.
We could go more into the theory here, if you are interested the idea is touched on in Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” but my take on the Price is this: the Price is what contrasts with the success of protagonist’s victory, the dark to make the light shine all the brighter, and to make the ordeals our hero struggled through feel real and grounded. Sometimes the Price has a double use, taking something away from the hero so that they can live a “normal” life. Not every hero’s journey requires a Price, but to resolve the tension in this way can add a layer of immersion and engagement to a plot.
In the case of “The Space Between Us,” everything unrolls too nicely for our hero. I had expected Gardner to successfully woo Tulsa but then have to let her go as they are literally from different worlds, but the last scene is Tulsa being fast-tracked into the Mars program by her new foster mother. Failing that, I had expected Gardner to complete his goal of having a perfect romantic day, then dying – his heart failing but fulfilled. Nah, he was just fine. At the very least, I expected Nathaniel to die in space, giving his life so that his son could live. Nope. Turns out the congenital defect didn’t kick in at all. The ending was therefore – just a little too sweet. See what I mean about contrast?
If you have a favorite Price, please feel free to leave a comment below, but regardless, let’s all keep working on our writing!
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